He looks younger asleep, the exact opposite of the fierce aging that yesterday’s chaos spread across his face. The room is messy in a way only a boy’s room can be messy: clothes everywhere, despite the fact that he’s got a “hamper” that automatically cleans clothes right there. There’s a musky scent in the room, something that doesn’t exactly smell like Elder, but that reminds me of him even more. You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I’d know this was his room just from the smell.

I step over piles of clothes and sit on the edge of his bed, near his feet. Elder’s bed dips, and his eyes flutter open.

“Amy,” he says in a sleep-heavy voice, warm and smiley, drawing the syllables out so that my name ends with “meeee.”

“Amy!” he shouts, sitting straight up in bed. “What the frex—how’d you—why are you here?”

I grin. “I found this,” I say, tossing the folded paper I found in my cryo chamber at Elder’s lap. He reaches for it, stretching in a way that reminds me of a cat.

“What is it?” he asks as he reads the page.

“It’s a list of everyone in the military who’s frozen on the cryo level. I double-checked it against the official records.” Elder looks confused, but then I add, “It’s the next clue Orion left for me . . . for us.”

Elder stares at the paper, brow furrowed in thought. “The last clue was about adding things up.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I counted—there are twenty-seven people on that list. But I tried twenty-seven—the number, spelling it out—it didn’t work. None of the doors opened.”

I don’t know what I expected from Elder—for him to suddenly remember another locked door somewhere on the ship or for him to magically add up the list to something other than twenty-seven, but all he does is say “Hmmm,” and toss the paper back to me. He slides out of bed, and once he’s past the covers, I see that he’s not wearing pants. In fact, all he has on are a pair of boxer shorts—made of thin white linen and considerably shorter and tighter than the boxers boys wore on Earth. I stare openly. When I’d raced up here and plopped onto his bed, I hadn’t thought about what he’d be wearing—but now—

Elder laughs, and I notice his smirk.

“Oh, shut up and put some pants on!” I say, throwing a pillow at him.

I’m still blushing as Elder—now fully clothed—leads me back to the grav tube in the Learning Center. He pushes his wi-com to start the tube, then turns and holds his hand out to me.

Wait, what?

“I’ll go after you,” I say, stepping back.